Boaters in the balance: paradise between storm season and a deadly virus

 It’s the aftermath. All is calm. The skies are dull and muted and the trees sway with a soft lilting that betray nothing of their hectic weekend. The cicadas are back and screaming as they do.

Post Isaias in the Berry Islands is very uneventful. It’s Emancipation Day under lockdown.

Today, though there are no parties or flags flying around the little town, there is much to celebrate. We are all free from the ‘could have beens’ and ‘would have seens’ of Isaias.

For us, this marks our first hurricane experienced and survived. There was all the hype and the preparations and the waiting game we played; the two days where everything was put away, secured, our lines were tied and we were as-ready-as-we-could-be and we had literally nothing to do but watch that huge red spinning blob heading toward us, courtesy of the weather media. Friends far and wide sent messages of hope and prayers and worry and concern.

Meanwhile we took advantage of the trappings of the marina life. Long showers. Laundry. Then the tropical storm had strengthened and had been upgraded to a hurricane. We added more lines. The boats started to look like a spaghetti junction.

The next morning Isaias had strengthened further and was expected to make landfall as a Category 2 hurricane in the Berry islands. Our eyes widened. We received text messages that warned we better find shelter onshore. 

 

Since we are hurricane virgins and were a bit slow, we learned that everyone else had anticipated this and all the local accommodation was booked. And so, we resigned ourselves to face this on our boats.

The marina staff came by and said we could expect the surge to come up 8 feet from low tide and cover the jetties. Our eyes widened some more.

But the night came and went with some gusty winds and a lot of rain. We spent the night with our eyes closed. Phew. That was definitely a hurricane-lite!

 

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We have survived hurricane Isaias here in the protected marina and now it’s time to venture out. We are a couple of the only private sail boats left in the Bahamas, as hurricane season is now in full swing. Others have headed up the US coast or way down the Caribbean island chain to Grenada.

Here, the sea is dotted with huge floating hunks of metal. Ships. Cruise ships. They are empty but for a skeleton crew who lurk somewhere deep inside. The colourful slides and pools on deck are silent. Dead.

We are anchored off Great Harbour Cay in the Bahamas. The government has allowed these monstrosities to anchor here and wait. Wait for Corona virus to end? For the tourism industry to resume? Each day it’s looking less likely. A massive industry, one that employs thousands of Bahamians and feeds thousands of families here, is in big trouble. It is everything the Coronavirus loves. Lots of people in close proximity. And so it’s all on hold.

Bahamas has set a new total lockdown. We need to get away. Back to our reality during the earlier lockdowns where we frolicked in the remote Ragged Islands.

We spend the first night in a surreal spot. We drop anchor between two islands. We soon find out we are not allowed ashore anywhere here, not even in the water off the beaches. Because these are not normal beaches. These have been dredged and carried and placed in exactly these spots by the Norwegian Cruise Line Company who bought and renamed the islands years ago. There are winding slides and rides and a 40 ft high balloon with the company logo – all the garish colours and plastic eyesores of Disney are here, surrounded by hundreds of miles of ocean and a few modest islands of Bahamians. It’s a tad revolting. It’s creepy. It’s definitely surreal.

 

And now, since there are no tourists to lay out on the sun loungers or sip the rum punches through colourful straws, the place lies dormant. A random digger moves about, a security vehicle patrols – for what?! Against what? We find out we are on the list of threats. Venture out in the dinghy to cool off and we are literally chased away by a security guard. “You are too close! This is a private island!” “Can we just swim here, near the beach?” “NO! You are too close!”. We get it. Time to move on.

And so we have found another little piece of unspoiled paradise to explore and play in. We stocked up as best we could from the mailboat back at the edge of the little town of Bullocks Harbour and now we can survive quite well for weeks out here. Providing all the storms flying off the coast of Africa swing away!

 

So day to day, we read of the world’s atrocities, the covid numbers climbing everywhere, especially the Bahamas, and when we just can’t face any more of the bad news we unplug and set out in the dinghies. Blue holes to swim in, turtle ponds to marvel at, rocky hikes and beaches to explore. While the weather holds, we are holding on to paradise.

 

 

 

Egg-sactly WhatsApp? Pondering the pitfalls of remote shopping in paradise

The problem with ordering groceries over WhatsApp from a remote island is that you can’t walk through the aisles and be tempted by things you don’t need.

The problem is that you have to order a week in advance, as you need to allow time for the order to be processed and the remote shopper to do her thing, then you have to be available on your phone on some random time and day in between the order and the delivery, to approve the check out and see the printed out bill on your phone screen.

The problem is that you have to wait for an undetermined number of days for the delivery boat to make his way back down to your remote island, weather and his mood and boat repairs all notwithstanding.

The problem is that you have to up anchor and move your floating home to another island to go and retrieve your goods. And when you see the mailboat is docked in the harbour you make the silly mistake of thinking he might be ready to offload all the boxes within an hour or two or three…

The trouble is that the whole process takes up about two or three days of your life.

Or so I thought.

The real trouble is this:

Lost in translation. As I had each order cycle before, I ordered 12 regular eggs (for baking etc.) and 12 organic eggs (for frying etc. as JW has an allergy to the regular ones).

When JW returned with our goodies from the dock there seemed to be too many boxes. And then he broke one open and there were the eggs. Endless eggs. 24 dozen eggs. An entire 3 foot by 3 foot box full of fragile yolky cargo.

“Nooooooooooo! Oh my God. What the hell?!?!” I shouted and squealed as he passed me each box, and all the other boats wondered what on earth had been delivered to Shiloh. 

The problem with ordering groceries over WhatsApp from a remote island is that by the time you receive the items, they are a week old and to return something would add another week or so before it made it’s way back to the store.

But the real trouble is that English is a tricky language. 12 means a dozen when it comes to eggs, surely? Apparently in the Bahamas, over WhatsApp texting, to our designated shopper, not.

After much ado about the language and the misunderstanding and my absolute horror at discovering we had unwittingly purchased USD$100 of eggs that we would never be able to eat, a solution was found.

The store agreed to take back what we didn’t want, couldn’t use, as long as they arrived back in ‘a good condition’. Our credit card would be refunded at that point.

So off the boxes went, in the dinghy, back to the mailboat, repacked and left in the hands of the crew. Please make sure these find their way back to Nassau, safely, unbroken, fresh, safe.

It’s been nearly a week. I have no idea the fate of the many dozens.

We are about to leave the last of the Internet signal from Duncan Town as we make our way through the Ragged and Jumentos Islands. It might be weeks before we find out how they fared.

Hurricane season began a few days ago and there has been a mass exodus of boats.

We had a couple sentimental ‘last sundowners, last supper’ at the Hog Cay yacht club as the last stragglers leave. 

 

Some put their sails up and head off to the west, days of passage ahead. We’ve moved to a new anchorage eight miles north. The next one will be three more miles. And then maybe a 10 mile journey to the next. We will continue to explore the beaches, finding shells and sea glass, we will swim in the blue waters by day, and sip sundowners in the evenings. 

It’s going to take us a while. And if the weather cooperates, that’s exactly how we like it.

There will be no more mailboat orders from Duncan Town this year. The next time we buy eggs there will be no room for colossal misinterpretation. We will be entering a real physical store, with masks and social distancing and all the trappings of the Covid-19 reality of 2020. 

I’m a bit nervous about that.  We are months behind the rest of the world in coming to terms with the crazy new reality. I think I might prefer 288 eggs delivered in error and omelettes forever.

Ragged elements

Somewhere in a large body of water, there are a jagged, randomly lying set of tiny, ragged islands. Little rocks peeking up into the world, ants on the surface of vast oceans. 

Little ragged islands whose beaches are the receptacle of the human race’s discarded things. Bright yellow bottles, Jordan flip flops, the severed heads of dolls. 

These little islands are oblivious to TikTok and Trump and pandemics. There are no restaurants, no radio stations, no roads, no people but for a handful of die-hard fishermen and Jolly who runs the Ponderosa on Ragged Island.

And then there are the cruisers. A motley mix of boats from Scotland, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Germany, USA. It doesn’t matter where they come from. Whether their boat is big or small, old or new.

Down here in the Ragged Islands is a world unto itself. There is no source of water nor fuel. There is nowhere to pop in for eggs or milk. No convenience of any kind.

There is just you, your crew and your boat. What you brought is what you have. There are sunsets and beach hikes and salvaging washed up treasures.

Mostly, there is just nature in it’s omnipotence. Sure, they’ve built a small straw hut on one beach and called it a yacht club. We all love the irony. Sure, the loose group meets at 4pm there every day for ‘sundowners’. For a sense of camaraderie. For a semblance of community.

It’s our small fraction of humanity’s way of keeping the elephant at bay. The harsh reality that all society’s layers are peeled away. Nothing can protect us from the rawness of nature. We are literally at it’s mercy.

The wind howls. There are no buildings to take shelter. The waves mount and roll and rise. The next batch of random plastic is thrown violently onto the beaches. The little boats can only scramble between the ragged islands to find shelter. And as the wind clocks, so do the little boats…

Somewhere in the world, people are emptying supermarket shelves of hand sanitizer and toilet paper and breathing through masks in a panic.

We are looking at the waves and the wind direction and trying to decide whether we should face the 8 mile trip from this one anchorage back to the other. We’ve lost our protection here and the boat is creaking and groaning as the waves hit. Wind sings through our rigging. It’s over 30 knots. And we need to move. The sooner the better.

Our little armada gets engines going and with trepidation, head out from the warmth of our saloon cocoon to face the weather.

An hour later we have come out around a huge shallow bank and we can see the protected anchorage ahead. Only 3 miles. But we must turn directly into the wind that is peaking at 35 knots. The waves have grown and they fly up at us. Salt water assaults the boat, our faces, our sanity. We have slowed to 2 knots against the onslaught of weather. At this rate it will take an hour to reach that safe(ish) place ahead, where friends in other boats sit cuddled up with cups of coffee in their respective cocoons.

But then the banging starts. Smash, bang. Splash. Our bright green stand up board, tied to the trampoline on the front of the boat has come loose on one end and has joined forces with the enemy. Between the wind, the waves and the board, Shiloh and crew are losing this one.

John dons a flimsy jacket and tries to head to the deck to secure the board. Wave after wave slams him. There’s not much to hold on to up there and I’m on the helm, face full of wind, screaming ‘Be careful!’. I’m so sure he’s going to fly off. And then I see that the board has loosened our unfinished trampoline that now hangs flapping into the water. If John loses grip and slips, there’s nothing up there to hold him.

Internally I’m swearing at Posiedon and then begging for this all to calm down or be over, but alas no luck. John makes his way back to me. A wet rat, dripping. He shouts against the wind “We’ll have to cut it loose. It’s smashing the hull and I can’t secure it in these conditions”.

He heads forward again – rising and falling and sliding, hair blown sideways and matted to his face. I hold my breath. “Turn around!” he shouts.

I turn the boat 180 degrees and after the wobbly side waves, we fall into a much smoother wave surfing. I take the engines out of gear yet we’ve picked up speed now. We are flying along at 6 knots in the wrong direction! We are losing the tough ground we made by the second.

John crawls out to the front and lies precariously out over the anchor chain. He saws and saws and finally the rope splits. The green board slides below and I watch as it comes out between the hulls, bobbing along on the waves below.

John is back in the cockpit and we look at each other, then down at the sea, which has taken a little piece of us.

A shrug and then back to the grind. I swing the boat back and we start again. Up down, smash splash…

An hour and a half later we slide into the lee of the island and find our place among the other sheltering boats.

And we live to see another 4 o clock happy hour at the yacht club.

As the crowd toasts and shares their stories of the day, my mind wanders. Maybe our bright green board, lost but not forgotten, has washed up on a beach in Cuba. Salvaged and loved once more.

Bahamas beyond the brochures

We were the only boaters in Fox Town yesterday. The only visitors in fact. We nearly outnumbered the locals in Fox Town yesterday.

This is our seventh month in the Bahamas. The cruising season ended nearly two months ago. In droves, they hoisted sails and headed south to the relative safety of Grenada or north to the marinas and boatyards of Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas as the hurricane season approached and insurance companies demanded.

The tourist season in the Abacos ended just over a week ago with a bang. The annual Cheeseburger in Paradise party, on the tiny sliver of land called Fiddle Cay, overrun by vendors and signs and t-shirts and caps and winding lines for free burgers, hot dogs, margaritas, beers, rum etc etc etc… with the bikini clad model types writhing to trap rap aboard the slew of rafted Trump-flag-waving candy coloured speedboats with matching hunks of glistening horsepower. Giant blow up unicorns and pink flamingos and blow up dolls literally, are spotted across the water. Bodies meander, gyrate, fluorescent plastic cups overflow with libation to the gods of excess and indulgence…  This spectacle of a party is unmatched in the Bahamas and no doubt far beyond. 

It is everything that Fox Town is not. We are less than 15 miles and a week away, and we are in another world. The small town life of the real Bahamas. Minus the American glitz and glamour. There are no looming buildings of Atlantis hanging over us here.

Just a couple of 10 year old local boys with dusty scratched knees and a bucket of stinking conch chunks and a fishing line, standing on the end of a dock with a friendly hello. They’ve caught three mutton snappers. Two tiny ones and a decent sized one too. That will be supper for the family. It’s enough.

A walk down the main and only street of Fox Town reveals what many small towns here do – of the 20 or so buildings, many boarded up, at least three are churches. And they are in the best shape. A recent paint job, a welcoming sign. It’s the hope that keeps the few remaining residents around.

The residents are industrious. What looks like a gas station, promising us a refill of diesel for our jugs, turns out to be everything but. The diesel hose, like a dead snake, lies curled on the ground, unused, with it’s fate unknown. They don’t have the ‘Take Away’ food promised on the sign in the yard either. However the shop inside has a working fridge with cold drinks and beers, melted chocolate bars, a 20 lb jar of pickles… in the other half of the shop, Nautica brand clothing and some seriously un-church-like ladies outfits. When I turn around in the tight space, I’m greeted by a barber’s chair complete with a full price list on the wall. A hair salon too!!! Too bad about the diesel though…

The residents are friendly. Genuinely. Out front of the non-diesel-carrying gas station we meet the son of the proprietor. He says, ‘let me make a call’. A few minutes later we’ve handed over our empty jugs and some cash and he disappears down the road in his old red pick up.

We are not worried in the least. We’ve forgotten to get his name but we know where he lives!

An hour later we are at Da Valley – Fox Town’s claim to fame – the only restaurant here. It’s known in cruising and local circles for it’s cracked conch. Not for it’s décor. We are sipping cold beers and eating burgers and such when who should appear but red pick up man with diesel filled and here. 

This is the real Bahamas. It’s nothing like the brochures. It’s definitely not what friends and family imagine when we say we are ‘living on our boat in the Bahamas’. There is zero glamour here. No tourism, no beach, no umbrellas in the cocktails. No cruise ships dock here. But it’s where Bahamians come from. It’s where they are ferried home to after a hard day’s work at a tourist resort, watching the revelers frolick on the best beaches and eating the most expensive lobster dishes. This is home.

For us it’s a lesson in contrast. In humility. It allows us a glimpse of life beyond the brochure.

We feel the contrast too in our small way. Looked for a vegetable or two, just to tide us over the couple weeks before we sail back to the land of plenty. Only one working store here. She had a box of non-rotting tomatoes. That was it. Perhaps an onion or two. It’ll have to do. We will have to open cans of mushy over salted vegetable remnants. But we can leave. We can move, we can experience it all. From Fox Town to Atlantis to nature’s wonders like Conception Island. We get to experience the whole Bahamas. And here, anchored off quiet Fox Town, there is plenty of time to contemplate our luck. 

Mutton, rail meat, Georgetown Beat!

We are eating out of Styrofoam in a shack. It’s a green shack and we’re eating mutton.

It’s a slapdash shack in a makeshift row of candy coloured structures, plucked together over the course of a few days. Wires and cables snake the ground around us and an open faced fan with exposed blades, throws warm dusty air at us. We are lined up against the wall with our tiny plastic forks, futilely spooning rice. The sticky plastic table cloth hosts a number of hot sauces and luke warm cream based salad dressings despite the lack of salad on the menu. There are the usual Bahamian offerings of barbecue ribs and chicken and mutton with peas and rice and macaroni and cheese and plantain. It’s all finger-lickin’-good. And it all goes to the hips. There must be 50 makeshift bars offering rum punches, sky juice (a trendy local gloopy white concoction of gin, sweetened condensed milk and coconut milk), and the local beers – Sands and Kalik, on special.

Over our heads, the local banter reaches epic volumes. It’s a ‘cacophonous symphony’ of shouts and laughter, knee slaps and hollers.

On another level, the base from competing sound systems lifts the floorboards to the incessant beat. Rake n' scrape, the local music pumps out hits like 'All Da Meat', 'Roach on My Bread', 'Bush Mechanic', 'That Ain't No Mosquito Bite' and more...

It’s hot and our clay-dust flip flopped feet have carried us around the tiny town, which is abuzz for the week. It’s the 66^th Annual National Family Island Regatta in Georgetown. Big words for a set of boat races in the harbour. The wooden boats with their giant sails, have been made across the small islands of the Bahamas for generations. Communities across the nation have been preparing and perfecting their vessels and crew since last year’s race. The boat names and their colours are amazing. Barbarians, Confusion, Beerly Legal, I’ve Tried, Ruff Justice, New Slaughter, Termite… etc. all out there, sails puffed, ‘rail meat’ out on the boards, representing their islands!

And we are here, eating steamed mutton in a shack. We will head out to one of the many race viewing vantage points, once our bellies are full, to watch the spectacle unfold. To the untrained eye, it’s organized chaos. With a breathtaking turquoise backdrop.

In the evenings there will be marching bands and fashion shows; the finest and most bizarre come out and flaunt what their mama gave them. There are literally all shapes and sizes, dressed in every colour, material and style imaginable. And some unimaginable. 

There will be music pulsing from giant black speakers piled high, and the partying will continue literally until the sun comes up. Oh, and I’ll be part of that! Lying in bed, facing the music with my 33 decibel industrial grade ear plugs. Zzzzzz.

This is a big event for Georgetown and the ‘out islands’ as they’re called. And we are here. Loving every minute of it. And slurping our mutton bones gleefully.